Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2009 by Roger Ebert

Author:Roger Ebert
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Film
ISBN: 9780740792168
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing LLC
Published: 2009-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

Michael Clayton

R, 119 m., 2007

George Clooney (Michael Clayton), Sean Cullen (Gene Clayton), Tom Wilkinson (Arthur Edens), Tilda Swinton (Karen Crowder), Sydney Pollack (Marty Bach), Michael O’Keefe (Barry Grissom), Ken Howard (Don Jefferies), Denis O’Hare (Mr. Greer). Directed by Tony Gilroy and produced by Jennifer Fox, Kerry Orent, Sydney Pollack, and Steve Samuels. Screenplay by Gilroy.

George Clooney brings a slick, ruthless force to the title role of Michael Clayton, playing a fixer for a powerful law firm. He works in the shadows, cleaning up messes, and he is a realist. He tells clients what they don’t want to hear. He shoots down their fantasies of “options.” One client complains bitterly that he was told Clayton was a miracle worker. “I’m not a miracle worker,” Clayton replies. “I’m a janitor.”

Clooney looks as if he stepped into the role from the cover of GQ. It’s the right look. Conservative suit, tasteful tie, clean shaven, every hair in place. Drives a leased Mercedes. Divorced, drives his son to school, has him on Saturdays. Has a hidden side to his life. Looks prosperous but lost his shirt on a failed restaurant and needs $75,000 or bad things might happen. Would certainly have $75,000 if he didn’t frequent a high-stakes poker game in a back room in Chinatown. Not much of a personal life.

Clayton works directly with Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), the head of the law firm; it’s one of those Pollack performances that embody authority, masculinity, intelligence, and knowing the score. But one of Bach’s top partners has just gone berserk, stripping naked in Milwaukee during a deposition hearing and running through a parking lot in the snow. This is Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), who opens the film with a desperate voice-over justifying himself to Michael.

The video of the deposition is not a pretty sight. One of the people watching it in horror is Karen Crowder, the chief legal executive for one of Marty Bach’s most important clients, a corporation being sued for poisonous pollution. Crowder is played by Tilda Swinton, who has been working a lot lately because of her sheer excellence; she has the same sleek grooming as Clayton, the power wardrobe, every hair in place. Thinking of Clooney, Pollack, Wilkinson, and Swinton, you realize how much this film benefits from its casting. Switch out those four and the energy and tension might evaporate.

The central reality of the story is that the corporation is guilty, it is being sued for billions, the law firm knows it is guilty, it is being paid millions to run the defense, and now Arthur Edens holds the smoking gun, and it’s not quite all he’s holding when he runs naked through the parking lot.

Enough of the plot. Naming the film after Michael Clayton is an indication that the story centers on his life, his loyalties, his being just about fed up. Arthur Edens is a treasured friend of his, a bipolar victim who has stopped taking his pills and now glows with reckless zeal and conviction. We

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